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Comment by fearofpoets | Hacker News Reader

We're super excited to be announcing Grasshopper today! We're hoping that it'll make learning to code accessible to more adults that are interested in applying coding skills to their careers, hobbies, or just for fun.

Please let us know what you think, ask questions, all that jazz. We're still in the process of learning and making changes, so all feedback is super helpful.

- Laura (Grasshopper Founder)

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I was about to install it, but then didn't because of all the access rights it wants. Why does it need my called id and information on who I call?

If you try to install the app, does it actually list those permissions? Or are they just listed on the Play Store listing?

We think there's a bug that's hitting some folks on Play Store that's related to an old manifest from our Beta 9 months ago... but we don't require those permissions anymore. Or at least we shouldn't. If you do see something when you actually try to download it, could you reach out to grasshopper-support@google.com? We're trying to find instances of this occurring and trying to convince the Play Store team it needs to be fixed :-/

I got the notification for those permissions on play.google.com. If I download via the app store app on the phone, no such permissions are mentioned.

Thanks for verifying. Just got off the phone with the Play Store support folks. Apparently it's the Play Store policy on play.google.com to list every permission you've ever asked for forever. We pushed a build many moons ago while we were in beta that asked for permissions by accident, but fixed it very quickly. We no longer ask for those permissions.

This isn't a great experience for us or other developers, so I'm escalating internally. Thanks again for the report.

I click “Start Learning” I get “Grasshopper wants to use google.com to Sign in”

Why?

Good question! We're building Grasshopper while we're within Google's Area 120, so the easiest way for us to ensure Google's privacy best practices are followed is if we use Google Authentication.

It might be possible for us to convince the powers-that-be to use another form of authentication, but for right now, we're sticking with just Google Auth.

I think that:

Privacy best practice is to know nothing, or as little as possible, about the user.

If storing progress is required, and local device storage is not sufficient, a minimalist online setup is the desirable solution.

An automatically generated user id and a simple user-progress table should be enough. GCloud has all the required parts ready to go.

In any case this whole thing should come after the user has had a chance to experience the product.

But that’s just me.

I ain’t no power-to-be ;)

We've thought about putting the signup after the tutorial, just haven't had the time to get to it just yet. I'll add this as a +1 to us starting to work on it :)

Thanks for the feedback!

The google signin was the stopping point for me too.

Saying that you want to use "best practices" is a great way to sidestep the question of why an app like this needs any private information at all.

Not trying to side-step, just trying not to get into the weeds too much, but since you asked, reposting a bit of my response from another part of this thread:

We need a user account to store your progress: what puzzles you've completed, what code you've entered in order to save progress if you didn't complete the puzzle yet, coding streaks, etc. We're not collecting information about your device (or any other personally identifiable information other than the Google Account we associate with your account).

It's been easiest for us to do this user account creation using out-of-the-box Google Authentication, so that's why we went down this route. Hope that makes sense!

You can’t store progress locally?

If you do that, people complain that you don't sync the data. Source: my own apps.

That makes sense, but is Grasshopper really the kind of app you want to sync across devices? I sometimes work on mobile games, and we always have the issue of whether we should force people to login (and give us data) or play without the login. We obviously want the login to improve our chance to make money. But sometimes logging in causes users to quit the app. But we can let them play without logging in, and sometimes games do that to get players hooked and nag them to surrender some privacy later. But that is why we do it: to make money.

I get the ease of use for login/authentication. However, one thing that I'm running into is that I have a child user account setup on my tablet so my kids can use it without having an email. I tried to get my kid to use this app this morning but this account doesn't allow authentication so I just get an error: "there are no accounts to select". If I had an alternate way to sign-in I could get my kid involved in coding.

I personally wouldn't try this because it wants me to login. I don't care if it's Google authentication or Facebook or Yahoo or anything else. I don't see any reason why I should link any of my online accounts with this. Since this is an app, you could save all progress information on the device and if required, collect any analytics right from the device whenever it runs (if you do need usage data).

Please remove the need to create an account or login anywhere. Or make it optional so that those who do want to login, can. I would prefer the default be to not create/login to any account and an optional login flow for others.

Thanks!

Laura, just want to let you know that your response (sibling comment to this one) is marked as dead.

Weird. I'm usually a consumer and not a poster to Hacker News. Any idea why? Or what I could do to fix?

I guess on an Android phone there's no problem, but on my iPhone it starts by asking to make a google account.

So I couldn't test it.

What login system would you prefer? We're currently doing Google Authentication because it's the best way for us to uphold Google privacy best practices, but can chat with folks about what other types of authentication might be possible.

Why does it need a user account at all? You say it's to uphold privacy best practices, but I don't know what data it's collecting from my phone. I would hope none. But if no data is collected, I don't see why any authentication is required.

It's been easiest for us to do this user account creation using out-of-the-box Google Authentication, so that's why we went down this route. Hope that makes sense!

So to sum up : you’re not collecting information, you just want the user to be able to retrieve what he has already done.

First, you should ask for an account creation only when the user have already started. As I said, I didn’t even see if it was interesting at all, because of the login wall.

Second, if there are no sensitive information collected, there is no need of using a mountain to hit the nail. A pseudo will be enough. No email needed. Not sure if it even need a password... You store the pseudo locally and you are done.

(I agree I’m a little bit oversimplifying, but you see the point)

A username and a password. All this third party login nonsense needs to go. I just spent the better part of last week actively removing myself from all things google and I’ll be damned if I am going to throw that away over a coding app.

I am really curious why on the main page inside the phone there is a "Ukraine to Haiti" balloon with a Russian flag next to it?

Hey!

Heather — Curriculum Manager for Grasshopper here :)

That's the simplified Haitian flag.

The small teaser image you're seeing is the Haitian flag: blue at the top, and red at the bottom (the white is simply the background color).

The aim of that puzzle is to change the bottom stripe from yellow to red; changing the Ukrainian flag to Haitian.

Hope this helps explains things :)

I think you may have chosen risky colors, given the Crimea conflict is still quite fresh ;).

Off topic, but since your on the tram. Is there any way to allow a child's device using family link to access grasshopper? It would be great if on such a device one could add another account at least for the purpose of logging in to apps like this.

My teenage daughter showed me Grasshopper yesterday. She was very excited about her progress, showing off the puzzles that she had solved and the code she had written. She hates schoolwork, but she really loved the app. I think it's a fantastic way to approach that often daunting initial learning curve.

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